Daoism, also spelled Taoism, indigenous religio-philosophical tradition that has shaped Chinese life for more than 2,000 years. In the broadest sense, a Daoist attitude toward life can be seen in the accepting and yielding, the joyful and carefree sides of the Chinese character, an attitude that offsets and complements the moral and duty-conscious, austere and purposeful character ascribed to Confucianism. Daoism is also characterized by a positive, active attitude toward the occult and the metaphysical (theories on the nature of reality), whereas the agnostic, pragmatic Confucian tradition considers these issues of only marginal importance, although the reality of such issues is, by most Confucians, not denied.

More strictly defined, Daoism includes: the ideas and attitudes peculiar to the Laozi (or Daodejing; “Classic of the Way of Power”), the Zhuangzi, the Liezi, and related writings; the Daoist religion, which is concerned with the ritual worship of the Dao; and those who identify themselves as Daoists.

Daoist thought permeates Chinese culture, including many aspects not usually considered Daoist. In Chinese religion, the Daoist tradition—often serving as a link between the Confucian tradition and folk tradition—has generally been more popular and spontaneous than the official (Confucian) state cult and less diffuse and shapeless than folk religion.

Daoist philosophy and religion have found their way into all Asian cultures influenced by China, especially those of Vietnam, Japan, and Korea. Various religious practices reminiscent of Daoism in such areas of Chinese cultural influence indicate early contacts with Chinese travelers and immigrants that have yet to be elucidated.

Both Western Sinologists and Chinese scholars themselves have distinguished—since Han times (206 bce–220 ce)—between a Daoist philosophy of the great mystics and their commentators (daojia) and a later Daoist religion (daojiao). This theory—no longer considered valid—was based on the view that the “ancient Daoism” of the mystics antedated the “later Neo-Daoist superstitions” that were misinterpretations of the mystics’ metaphorical images. The mystics, however, should be viewed against the background of the religious practices existing in their own times. Their ecstasies, for example, were closely related to the trances and spirit journeys of the early magicians and shamans (religious personages with healing and psychic transformation powers). Not only are the authors of the Daodejing, the Zhuangzi (book of “Master Chuang”), and the Liezi (book of “Master Lie”) not the actual and central founders of an earlier “pure” Daoism later degraded into superstitious practices but they can even be considered somewhat on the margin of older Daoist traditions. Therefore, because there has been a nearly continuous mutual influence between Daoists of different social classes—philosophers, ascetics, alchemists, and the priests of popular cults—the distinction between philosophical and religious Daoism in this article is made simply for the sake of descriptive convenience.

There is also a tendency among scholars today to draw a less rigid line between what is called Daoist and what is called Confucian. The two traditions share many of the same ideas about man, society, the ruler, heaven, and the universe—ideas that were not created by either school but that stem from a tradition prior to either Confucius or Laozi.

Viewed from this common tradition, orthodox Confucianism limited its field of interest to the creation of a moral and political system that fashioned society and the Chinese empire; whereas Daoism, inside the same worldview, represented more personal and metaphysical preoccupations.

In the case of Buddhism—a third tradition that influenced China—fundamental concepts such as the nonexistence of the individual ego and the illusory nature of the physical world are diametrically opposed to Daoism. In terms of overt individual and collective practices, however, competition between these two religions for influence among the people—a competition in which Confucianism had no need to participate because it had state patronage—resulted in mutual borrowings, numerous superficial similarities, and essentially Chinese developments inside Buddhism, such as the Chan (Japanese Zen) sect. In folk religion, since Song times (960–1279), Daoist and Buddhist elements have coexisted without clear distinctions in the minds of the worshippers.

The great sages and their associated texts

Laozi and the Daodejing

Behind all forms of Daoism stands the figure of Laozi, traditionally regarded as the author of the classic text known as the Laozi, or the Daodejing (“Classic of the Way of Power”). The first mention of Laozi is found in another early classic of Daoist speculation, the Zhuangzi (4th–3rd century bce), so called after the name of its author. In this work Laozi is described as being one of Zhuangzi’s own teachers, and the same book contains many of the Master’s (Laozi’s) discourses, generally introduced by the questions of a disciple. The Zhuangzi also presents seven versions of a meeting of Laozi and Confucius. Laozi is portrayed as the elder and his Daoist teachings confound his celebrated interlocutor. The Zhuangzi also gives the only account of Laozi’s death. Thus, in this early source, Laozi appears as a senior contemporary of Confucius (6th–5th century bce) and a renowned Daoist master, a curator of the archives at the court of the Zhou dynasty (c. 1046–256 bce), and, finally, a mere mortal.

The first consistent biographical account of Laozi is found in the “Records of the Historian” (Shiji)—China’s first universal history (2nd century bce)—of Sima Qian. This concise résumé has served as the classical source on the philosopher’s life. Laozi’s family name was Li, his given name Er; and he occupied the post of archivist at the Zhou court. He is said to have instructed Confucius on points of ceremony. Observing the decline of the Zhou dynasty, Laozi left the court and headed west. At the request of Yin Xi, the guardian of the frontier pass, he wrote his treatise on the Dao in two scrolls. He then left China behind, and what became of him is not known. The historian quotes variant accounts, including one that attributed to Laozi an exceptional longevity; the narrative terminates with the genealogy of eight generations of Laozi’s supposed descendants. With passing references in other early texts, this constitutes the body of information on the life of the sage as of the 2nd century bce; it is presumably legendary (see alsoLaozi).

Modern scholarship has little to add to the Shiji account, and the Daodejing, regarded by many scholars as a compilation that reached its final form only in the 3rd century bce, rather than the work of a single author, stands alone, with all its attractions and enigmas, as the fundamental text of both philosophical and religious Daoism.

The work’s 81 brief sections contain only about 5,000 characters in all, from which fact derives still another of its titles, Laozi’s Five Thousand Words. The text itself appears in equal measure to express a profound quietism and anarchistic views on government. It is consequently between the extremes of meditative introspection and political application that its many and widely divergent interpreters have veered.

The Daodejing was meant as a handbook for the ruler. He should be a sage whose actions pass so unnoticed that his very existence remains unknown. He imposes no restrictions or prohibitions on his subjects; “so long as I love quietude, the people will of themselves go straight. So long as I act only by inactivity, the people will of themselves become prosperous.” His simplicity makes the Ten Thousand Things passionless and still, and peace follows naturally. He does not teach them discrimination, virtue, or ambition because “when intellect emerges, the great artifices begin. When discord is rife in families, ‘dutiful sons’ appear. When the State falls into anarchy, ‘loyal subjects’ appear.” Thus, it is better to banish wisdom, righteousness, and ingenuity, and the people will benefit a hundredfold.

Therefore the Sage rules by emptying their hearts (minds) and filling their bellies, weakening their wills and strengthening their bones, ever striving to make the people knowledgeless and desireless.

The word “people” in this passage more likely refers not to the common people but to those nobles and intellectuals who incite the ruler’s ambition and aggressiveness.

War is condemned but not entirely excluded: “Arms are ill-omened instruments,” and the sage uses them only when he cannot do otherwise. He does not glory in victory; “he that has conquered in battle is received with rites of mourning.”

The book shares certain constants of classical Chinese thought but clothes them in an imagery of its own. The sacred aura surrounding kingship is here rationalized and expressed as “inaction” (wuwei), demanding of the sovereign no more than right cosmological orientation at the centre of an obedient universe. Survivals of archaic notions concerning the compelling effect of renunciation—which the Confucians sanctified as ritual “deference” (rang)—are echoed in the recommendation to “hold to the role of the female,” with an eye to the ultimate mastery that comes of passivity.

It is more particularly in the function attributed to the Dao, or Way, that this little tract stands apart. The term “dao” was employed by all schools of thought. The universe has its dao; there is a dao of the sovereign, his royal mode of being, while the dao of man comprisescontinuity through procreation. Each of the schools, too, had its own dao, its way or doctrine. But in the Daodejing, the ultimate unity of the universal Dao itself, is proposed as a social ideal. It is this idealistic peculiarity that seems to justify later historians and bibliographers in their assignment of the term Daoist to the Daodejing and its successors.

From a literary point of view, the Daodejing is distinguished for its highly compressed style. Unlike the dialectic or anecdotalcomposition of other contemporary treatises, it articulates its cryptic subject matter in short, concise statements. More than half of these are in rhyme, and close parallelism recurs throughout the text. No proper name occurs anywhere. Although its historical enigmas are apparently insoluble, there is abundant testimony to the vast influence exercised by the book since the earliest times and in surprisingly varied social contexts. Among the classics of speculative Daoism, it alone holds the distinction of having become a scripture of the esoteric Daoist movements, which developed their own interpretations of its ambiguities and transmitted it as a sacred text.

The interpretation of Zhuangzi

Pseudohistorical knowledge of the sage Zhuangzi is even less well defined than that of Laozi. Most of Sima Qian’s brief portrait of the man is transparently drawn from anecdotes in the Zhuangzi itself and as such has no necessary basis in fact. The Zhuangzi, however, is valuable as a monument of Chinese literature and because it contains considerable documentary material, describing numerous speculative trends and spiritual practices of the Warring States period (475–221 bce).

Whereas the Daodejing is addressed to the sage-king, the Zhuangzi is the earliest surviving Chinese text to present a philosophy for private life, a wisdom for the individual. Zhuangzi is said to have preferred the doctrine of Laozi over all others; many of his writings strike the reader as metaphorical illustrations of the terse sayings of the “Old Master.”

Whereas Laozi in his book as well as in his life (in legend) was concerned with Daoist rule, Zhuangzi, some generations later, rejected all participation in society. He compared the servant of state to the well-fed decorated ox being led to sacrifice in the temple and himself to the untended piglet blissfully frolicking in the mire.

Here there is none of the Daodejing’s studied density. The rambling Zhuangzi opens with a sprightly fable, illustrating the incomprehension of small wildfowl of the majestic splendour of a gigantic bird. Other such parables demonstrate the relativity of all values: the sliding scales of size, utility, beauty, and perfection. There is a colloquy between the Lord of the Yellow River and the God of the Eastern Ocean, in which the complacent self-satisfaction of the lesser spirit is shaken by his unexpected meeting with inconceivable vastness. Humble artisans are depicted, who, through the perfect mastery of their craft, exemplify for their social superiors the art of mastering life. Life and death are equated, and the dying are seen to welcome their approaching transformation as a fusion with the Dao. A succession of acquiescent cripples exclaims in rapture on the strange forms in which it has pleased heaven to shape them. Those involved in state ritual are brought onstage only to be mocked, and the propositions of contemporary logic-choppers are drawn into the unending whirl of paradox, spun out to their conclusions, and so abolished. Such are a few aspects of this wild kaleidoscope of unconventional thought, a landmark in Chinese literature. Its concluding chapter is a systematic account of the preeminent thinkers of the time, and the note of mock despair on which it closes typifies the Zhuangzi’s position regarding the more formal, straitlaced ideologies that it parodies.

Among the strange figures that people the pages of Zhuangzi are a very special class of spiritualized being. Dwelling far apart from the turbulent world of men, dining on air and sipping the dew, they share none of the anxieties of ordinary folk and have the smooth, untroubled faces of children. These “supreme persons,” or “perfect persons,” are immune to the effects of the elements, untouched by heat and cold. They possess the power of flight and are described as mounting upward with a fluttering motion. Their effortless existence was the ultimate in autonomy, the natural spontaneity that Zhuangzi ceaselessly applauds. These striking portraits may have been intended to be allegorical, but whatever their original meaning, these Immortals (xian), as they came to be called, were to become the centre of great interest. Purely literary descriptions of their freedom, their breathtaking mobility, and their agelessness were construed as practical objectives by later generations. By a variety of practices, people attempted to attain these qualities in their own persons, and in time Zhuangzi’s unfettered paragons of liberty were to see themselves classified according to kind and degree in a hierarchy of the heavenly hosts (see alsoZhuangzi).

Basic concepts of Daoism

Certain concepts of ancient agrarian religion have dominated Chinese thought uninterruptedly from before the formation of the philosophic schools until the first radical break with tradition and the overthrow of dynastic rule at the beginning of the 20th century, and they are thus not specifically Daoist. The most important of these concepts are (1) the continuity between nature and human beings, or the interaction between the world and human society; (2) the rhythm of constant flux and transformation in the universe and the return or reversion of all things to the Dao from which they emerged; and (3) the worship of ancestors, the cult of heaven, and the divine nature of the sovereign.

Concepts of the universe and natural order

Cosmology

What Laozi calls the “constant Dao” in reality is nameless. The name (ming) in ancient Chinese thought implied an evaluation assigning an object its place in a hierarchical universe. The Dao is outside these categories.

It is something formlessly fashioned, that existed before heaven and earth… Its name (ming) we do not know; Dao is the byname that we give it. Were I forced to say to what class of things it belongs I should call it Immense.

Dao is the “imperceptible, indiscernible,” about which nothing can be predicated but that latently contains the forms, entities, and forces of all particular phenomena: “It was from the Nameless that heaven and earth sprang; the Named is the mother that rears the Ten Thousand Things, each after its kind.” The Nameless (wuming) and the Named (youming), Nothing (wu) and Something (you), are interdependent and “grow out of one another.”

Nothing (wu) and Dao are not identical; wu and you are two aspects of the constant Dao: “in its mode of being Unseen, we will see its mysteries; in the mode of the Seen, we will see its boundaries.”

Nothing does not mean “Nothingness” but rather indeterminacy, the absence of perceptible qualities; in Laozi’s view it is superior to Something. It is the Void (that is, empty incipience) that harbours in itself all potentialities and without which even Something lacks its efficacy.

Emptiness realized in the mind of the Daoist who has freed himself from all obstructing notions and distracting passions makes the Dao act through him without obstacle. An essential characteristic that governs the Dao is spontaneity (ziran), the what-is-so-of-itself, the self-so, the unconditioned. The Dao, in turn, governs the cosmos: “The ways of heaven are conditioned by those of the Dao, and the ways of Dao by the Self-so.”

This is the way of the sage who does not intervene but possesses the total power of spontaneous realization that is at work in the cosmos; of proper order in the world, “everyone, throughout the country, says ‘It happened of its own accord’ (ziran).”

The microcosm-macrocosm concept

The conception of the cosmos common to all Chinese philosophy is neither materialistic nor animistic (a belief system centring on soul substances); it can be called magical or even alchemical. The universe is viewed as a hierarchically organized organism in which every part reproduces the whole. The human being is a microcosm (small world) corresponding rigorously to this macrocosm (large world); the body reproduces the plan of the cosmos. Between humans and the world there exists a system of correspondences and participations that the ritualists, philosophers, alchemists, and physicians have described but certainly not invented. This originally magical feeling of the integral unity of mankind and the natural order has always characterized the Chinese mentality, and the Daoists especially have elaborated upon it. The five organs of the body and its orifices and the dispositions, features, and passions of humans correspond to the five directions, the five holy mountains, the sections of the sky, the seasons, and the Five Phases (wuxing), which in China are not material but are more like five fundamental phases of any process in space-time. Whoever understands the human experience thus understands the structure of the cosmos. The physiologist knows that blood circulates because rivers carry water and that the body has 360 articulations because the ritual year has 360 days. In religious Daoism the interior of the body is inhabited by the same gods as those of the macrocosm. Adepts often search for their divine teacher in all the holy mountains of China until they finally discover him in one of the “palaces” inside their heads.

Fishing in a Mountain Stream, detail of an ink drawing on silk by …

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri (Nelson Fund)

Return to the Dao

The law of the Dao as natural order refers to the continuous reversion of everything to its starting point. Anything that develops extreme qualities will invariably revert to the opposite qualities: “Reversion is the movement of the Dao” (Laozi). Everything issues from the Dao and ineluctably returns to it; Undifferentiated Unity becomes multiplicity in the movement of the Dao. Life and death are contained in this continuing transformation from Nothing into Something and back to Nothing, but the underlying primordial unity is never lost.

For society, any reform means a type of return to the remote past; civilization is considered a degradation of the natural order, and the ideal is the return to an original purity. For the individual, wisdom is to conform to the rhythm of the cosmos. The Daoist mystics, however, not only adapt themselves ritually and physiologically to the alternations of nature but create a void inside themselves that permits them to return to nature’s origin. Laozi, in trance, “wandered freely in the origin of all things.” Thus, in ecstasy he escaped the rhythm of life and death by contemplating the ineluctable return: “Having attained perfect emptiness, holding fast to stillness, I can watch the return of the ever active Ten Thousand Things.” The number 10,000 symbolizes totality.

Change and transformation

All parts of the cosmos are attuned in a rhythmical pulsation. Nothing is static; all things are subjected to periodical mutations and transformations that represent the Chinese view of creation. Instead of being opposed with a static ideal, change itself is systematized and made intelligible, as in the theory of the Five Phases and in the 64 hexagrams of the Yijing (Book of Changes), which are basic recurrent constellations in the general flux. An unchanging unity (the constant Dao) was seen as underlying the kaleidoscopic plurality.

Zhuangzi’s image for creation was that of the activity of the potter and the bronze caster: “to shape and to transform” (zaohua). These are two phases of the same process: the imperceptible Dao shapes the cosmos continuously out of primordial chaos; the perpetual transformation of the cosmos by the alternations of yin and yang, or complementary energies (seen as night and day or as winter and summer), is nothing but the external aspect of the same Dao. The shaping of the Ten Thousand Things by the Supreme Unity and their transformation by yin and yang are both simultaneous and perpetual. Thus, the sage’s ecstatic union is a “moving together with the Dao; dispersing and concentrating, his appearance has no consistency.” United with the constant Dao, the sage’s outer aspect becomes one of ungraspable change. Because the gods can become perceptible only by adapting to the mode of this changing world, their apparitions are “transformations” (bianhua); and the magician (huaren) is believed to be one who transforms rather than one who conjures out of nothing.

Concepts of human being and society

Wuwei

The power acquired by the Daoist is de, the efficacy of the Dao in the human experience, which is translated as “virtue.” Laozi viewed it, however, as different from Confucian virtue:

Persons of superior virtue are not virtuous, and that is why they have virtue. Persons of inferior [Confucian] virtue never stray from virtue, and that is why they have no virtue.

The “superior virtue” of Daoism is a latent power that never lays claim to its achievements; it is the “mysterious power” (xuande) of Dao present in the heart of the sage—“persons of superior virtue never act (wuwei), and yet there is nothing they leave undone.”

Wuwei is neither an ideal of absolute inaction nor a mere “not-overdoing.” It is actions so well in accordance with things that their authors leave no traces of themselves in their work: “Perfect activity leaves no track behind it; perfect speech is like a jade worker whose tool leaves no mark.” It is the Dao that “never acts, yet there is nothing it does not do.” There is no true achievement without wuwei because every deliberate intervention in the natural course of things will sooner or later turn into the opposite of what was intended and will result in failure.

Those sages who practice wuwei live out of their original nature before it was tampered with by knowledge and restricted by morality; they have reverted to infancy (that is, the undiminished vitality of the newborn state); they have “returned to the state of the Uncarved Block (pu).” Pu is uncut and unpainted wood, simplicity. Society carves this wood into specific shapes for its own use and thus robs the individual piece of its original totality. “Once the uncarved block is carved, it forms utensils (that is, instruments of government); but when the Sages use it, they would be fit to become Chiefs of all Ministers. This is why the great craftsman (ruler) does not carve (rule).”

The social ideal of primitivism

Any willful human intervention is believed to be able to ruin the harmony of the natural transformation process. The spontaneous rhythm of the primitive agrarian community and its un-self-conscious symbiosis with nature’s cycles is thus the Daoist ideal of society.

In the ideal society there are no books; the Laozi (Daodejing) itself would not have been written but for the entreaty of Yin Xi, the guardian of the pass, who asked the “Old Master” to write down his thoughts. In the Golden Age, past or future, knotted cords are the only form of records. The people of this age are “dull and unwitting, they have no desire; this is called uncarved simplicity. In uncarved simplicity the people attain their true nature.”

Zhuangzi liked to oppose the heaven-made and the man-made; that is, nature and society. He wanted humans to renounce all artificial “cunning contrivances” that facilitate their work but lead to “cunning hearts” and agitated souls in which the Dao will not dwell. Man should equally renounce all concepts of measure, law, and virtue. “Fashion pecks and bushels for people to measure by and they will steal by peck and bushel.” He blamed not only the culture heroes and inventors praised by the Confucians but also the sages who shaped the rites and rules of society.

That the unwrought substance was blighted in order to fashion implements—this was the crime of the artisan. That the Way (Dao) and its Virtue (de) were destroyed in order to create benevolence and righteousness—this was the fault of the sage.

Even “coveting knowledge” is condemned because it engenders competition and “fight to the death over profit.”

Ideas of knowledge and language

Characteristic of Zhuangzi are his ideas of knowledge and language developed under the stimulus of his friend and opponent, the philosopher Hui Shi.

Because, in the Daoist view, all beings and everything are fundamentally one, opposing opinions can arise only when people lose sight of the Whole and regard their partial truths as absolute. They are then like the frog at the bottom of the well who takes the bit of brightness he sees for the whole sky. The closed systems—i.e., the passions and prejudices into which petty minds shut themselves—hide the Dao, the “Supreme Master” who resides inside themselves and is superior to all distinctions.

Thus, Zhuangzi’s authentic persons fully recognize the relativity of notions such as “good and evil” and “true and false.” They are neutral and open to the extent that they offer no active resistance to any would-be opponent, whether it be a person or an idea. “When you argue, there are some things you are failing to see. In the greatest Dao nothing is named; in the greatest disputation, nothing is said.”

The person who wants to know the Dao is told: “Do not meditate, do not cogitate.…Follow no school, follow no way, and then you will attain the Dao”; discard knowledge, forget distinctions, reach no-knowledge. “Forget” indicates that distinctions had to be known first. The original ignorance of the child is distinguished from the no-knowledge of the sage who can “sit in forgetfulness.”

The mystic does not speak because declaring unity, by creating the duality of the speaker and the affirmation, destroys it. Those who speak about the Dao (like Zhuangzi himself) are “wholly wrong. For he who knows does not speak; he who speaks does not know.” Zhuangzi was aware of the fact that, in speaking about it, he could do no more than hint at the way toward the all-embracing and intuitive knowledge.

Identity of life and death

Mystic realization does away with the distinction between the self and the world. This idea also governs Zhuangzi’s attitude toward death. Life and death are but one of the pairs of cyclical phases, such as day and night or summer and winter. “Since life and death are each other’s companions, why worry about them? All things are one.” Life and death are not in opposition but merely two aspects of the same reality, arrested moments out of the flux of the ongoing mutations of everything into everything. Human beings are no exception: “They go back into the great weaving machine: thus all things issue from the Loom and return to the Loom.”

Viewed from the single reality experienced in ecstasy, it is just as difficult to distinguish life from death as it is to distinguish the waking Zhuangzi from the dreaming butterfly. Death is natural, and men ought neither to fear nor to desire it. Zhuangzi’s attitude thus is one of serene acceptance.

Religious goals of the individual

The Confucian sage (sheng) is viewed as a ruler of antiquity or a great sage who taught humanity how to return to the rites of antiquity. Daoist sagehood, however, is internal (neisheng), although it can become manifest in an external royalty (waiwang) that brings the world back to the Way by means of quietism: variously called “non-intervention” (wuwei), “inner cultivation” (neiye), or “art of the heart and mind” (xinshu).

Whereas worldly ambitions, riches, and (especially) discursive knowledge scatter persons and drain their energies, sages “embrace Unity” or “hold fast to the One” (baoyi); that is, they aspire to union with the Dao in a primordial undivided state underlying consciousness. “Embracing Unity” also means that they maintain the balance of yin and yang within themselves and the union of their spiritual (hun) and vegetative (po) souls, the dispersion of which spells death; Daoists usually believe there are three hun and seven po. The spiritual souls tend to wander (in dreams), and any passion or desire can result in loss of soul. To retain and harmonize one’s souls is important for physical life as well as for the unification of the whole human entity. Cleansed of every distraction, sages create inside themselves a void that in reality is plenitude. Empty of all impurity, they are full of the original energy (yuanqi), which is the principle of life that in the ordinary person decays from the moment of birth on.

Because vital energy and spirituality are not clearly distinguished, old age in itself becomes a proof of sagehood. Aged Daoist sages become sages because they have been able to cultivate themselves throughout a long existence; their longevity in itself is the proof of their sageliness and union with the Dao. Externally they have a healthy, flourishing appearance; inside they contain an ever-flowing source of energy that manifests itself in radiance and in a powerful, beneficial influence on their surroundings, which is the charismatic efficacy (de) of the Dao.

The mystic insight of Zhuangzi made him scorn those who strove for longevity and immortality through physiological practices. Nevertheless, physical immortality was a Daoist goal probably long before and alongside the unfolding of Daoist mysticism. Adepts of immortality have a choice between many methods that are all intended to restore the pure energies possessed at birth by the infant whose perfect vital force Laozi admired. Through these methods, adepts become Immortals (xian) who live 1,000 years in this world if they so choose and, once satiated with life, “ascend to heaven in broad daylight.” This is the final apotheosis of those Daoists who transform their bodies into pure yang energy.

Zhuangzi’s descriptions of the indescribable Dao, as well as of those who have attained union with the Dao, are invariably poetic. Perfect persons have identified their life rhythms so completely with the rhythm of the forces of nature that they have become indistinguishable from them and share their immortality and infinity, which is above the cycle of ordinary life and death. They are “pure spirit. They feel neither the heat of the brushlands afire nor the cold of the waters in flood”; nothing can startle or frighten them. They are not magically invulnerable (as the adepts of physical immortality would have it), but they are “so cautious in shunning and approaching, that nothing can do them injury.”

“Persons like this ride the clouds as their carriages and the sun and moon as their steeds.” The theme of the spiritual wandering (yuanyou), which can be traced back to the shamanistic soul journey, crops up wherever Zhuangzi speaks of the perfect persons.

Those who let themselves be borne away by the unadulterated energies of heaven and earth and can harness the six composite energies to roam through the limitless, whatever need they henceforth depend on?

These wanderings are journeys within oneself; they are roamings through the Infinite in ecstasy. Transcending the ordinary distinctions of things and one with the Dao, “the Perfect Person has no self, the Holy Person has no merit, the Sage has no fame.” They lives inconspicuously in society, and whatever applies to the Dao applies to them.

Symbolism and mythology

Daoists prefer to convey their ecstatic insights in images and parables. The Dao is low and receiving as a valley, soft and life-giving as water, and it is the “mysterious female,” the source of all life, the Mother of the Ten Thousand Things. Human beings should become weak and yielding as water that overcomes the hard and the strong and always takes the low ground; they should develop their male and female sides but “prefer femininity,” “feed on the mother,” and find within themselves the well that never runs dry. Dao is also the axis, the ridgepole, the pivot, and the empty centre of the hub. The sage is the “useless tree” or the huge gourd too large to be fashioned into implements. A frequent metaphor for the working of the Dao is the incommunicable ability to be skillful at a craft. Skilled artisans do not ponder their actions, but, in union with the dao of their subjects, they do their work reflexively and without conscious intent.

Much ancient Chinese mythology has been preserved by the Daoists, who drew on it to illustrate their views. A chaos (hundun) myth is recorded as a metaphor for the undifferentiated primal unity; the mythical emperors (Huangdi and others) are extolled for wise Daoist rule or blamed for introducing harmful civilization. Dreams of mythical paradises and journeys on clouds and flying dragons are metaphors for the wanderings of the soul, the attainment of the Dao, and the identity of dream and reality.

Daoists have transformed and adapted some ancient myths to their beliefs. Thus, the Queen Mother of the West (Xiwangmu), who was a mountain spirit, pestilence goddess, and tigress, became a high deity—the Fairy Queen of all Immortals.

Early eclectic contributions

The idea of yin and yang

Yin and yang literally mean “dark side” and “sunny side” of a hill. They are mentioned for the first time in the Xice, or “Appended Explanations” (c. 4th century bce), an appendix to the Yijing (Book of Changes): “A succession of yin and yang is called the Dao.” Yin and yang are two complementary, interdependent phases alternating in space and time; they are emblems evoking the harmonious interplay of all pairs of opposites in the cosmos.

First conceived by musicians, astronomers, or diviners and then propagated by a school that came to be named after them, yin and yang became the common stock of all Chinese philosophy. The Daoist treatise Huainanzi (book of “Master Huainan”) describes how the one “Primordial Breath” (yuanqi) split into the light ethereal yang breath, which formed heaven; and the heavier, cruder yin breath, which formed earth. The diversifications and interactions of yin and yang produced the Ten Thousand Things.

The warm breath of yang accumulated to produce fire, the essence of which formed the sun. The cold breath of yin accumulated to produce water, the essence of which became the moon.

The idea of qi

Yin and yang are often referred to as two “breaths” (qi). Qi means air, breath, or vapour—originally the vapour arising from cooking cereals. It also came to mean a cosmic energy. The Primordial Breath is a name of the chaos (state of Unity) in which the original life force is not yet diversified into the phases that the concepts yin and yang describe.

All persons have a portion of this primordial life force allotted to them at birth, and their task is not to dissipate it through the activity of the senses but to strengthen, control, and increase it in order to live out the full span of their lives.

The idea of wuxing

Another important set of notions associated with the same school of yinyang are the “Five Phases” (wuxing) or “powers” (wude): water, fire, wood, metal, earth. They are also “breaths” (i.e., active energies), the idea of which enabled the philosophers to construct a coherent system of correspondences and participations linking all phenomena of the macrocosm and the microcosm. Associated with spatial directions, seasons of the year, colours, musical notes, animals, and other aspects of nature, they also correspond, in the human body, to the five inner organs. The Daoist techniques of longevity are grounded in these correspondences. The idea behind such techniques was that of nourishing the inner organs with the essences corresponding to their respective phases and during the season dominated by the latter.

Yang Zhu and the Liezi

Yang Zhu (c. 400 bce) is representative of the early pre-Daoist recluses, “those who hid themselves” (yinshi), who, in the Analects of Confucius, ridiculed Confucius’s zeal to improve society. Yang Zhu held that each individual should value his own life above all else, despise wealth and power, and not agree to sacrifice even a single hair of his head to benefit the whole world. The scattered sayings of Yang Zhu in pre-Han texts are much less hedonistic than his doctrine as it is presented in the Liezi (book of “Master Lie”).

Liezi was a legendary Daoist master whom Zhuangzi described as being able to “ride the wind and go soaring around with cool and breezy skill.” In many old legends Liezi is the paragon of the spiritual traveler. The text named after him (of uncertain date) presents a philosophy that views natural changes as a pattern that can serve as a model for human activities.

Guanzi and Huainanzi

In the several Daoist chapters of the Guanzi (book of “Master Guan”), another text of uncertain date, emphasis is placed on “the art of the heart (mind)”; the heart governs the body as the chief governs the state. If the organs and senses submit to it, the heart can achieve a desirelessness and emptiness that make it a pure receptacle of the “heart inside the heart,” a new soul that is the indwelling Dao.

The Huainanzi is a compilation of essays written by different learned magicians (fangshi) at the court of their patron, the prince of Huainan. Although lacking in unity, it is a compendium of the knowledge of the time that had been neglected by the less speculative scholars of the new state Confucianism. The Huainanzi discusses the most elaborate cosmology up to that time, the position of human beings in the macrocosm, the proper ordering of society, and the ideal of personal sagehood.

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Daoism is a system of philosophy and religion that began in ancient China. It is sometimes spelled Taoism. Along with the philosophy called Confucianism, Daoism has helped to shape Chinese culture. Confucianism focuses on human society and the duties of its members. In contrast, Daoism emphasizes nature. It is more joyful and carefree.

In Chinese the word dao means "way," indicating a way of thought or life. There have been several such ways in China’s long history, including Confucianism and Buddhism. Daoism (also spelled Taoism) is a philosophical and religious tradition that developed in China in ancient times under the influence of ideas credited to a man named Laozi. Like Confucianism, it has deeply influenced Chinese culture. Daoism began as a complex system of philosophical thought. In later centuries it also emerged as a communal religion and was integrated into popular folk religion as well.

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